In three years of working as a features writer (for a broadsheet and a few magazines), the Diageo Reserve World Class Bar Crawl on May 12 (yes, on a Monday!) is by far the most enjoyable event I have ever had the privilege of being invited to.

It's one of those rare instances wherein I can actually say I feel like I'm not working.

A brief background for the uninitiated: Diageo Reserve World Class is an international cocktail education program and bartending competition. Last year the Philippines made its debut in the event with bartenders from five bars joining. This year, bartenders from eleven different bars participated. Reserve Luxury Manager for Diageo Philippines Marie Ona attributes the jump in number to the mushrooming of bars that 2013 saw.

In celebration of this blossoming cocktail scene in Metro Manila—and I guess as an occasion for the four Filipino bartenders who qualified for the regional finals in Singapore to warm up and keep their spirits high—Diageo Reserve or…

You have to give your friends credit for being sensitive, perceptive, and downright loving. The book is second-hand and several passages have been underlined:But that is the whole point of a European cafe: to linger excessively and utterly without guilt.

People are least happy when they're commuting to work.

"Not my problem" is not a philosophy. It's a mental illness.

In other words, better to be a small fish in a clean pond than a big fish in a polluted lake.

Commuting, in particular, has been found to be detrimental to our happiness, as well as our physical health.

After quite a while I find myself a proper weekend—48 hours all to myself. April has been generous with exciting projects and charming men (heck I met Jojo Lastimosa and R2 Tolentino), as well as sweet gifts. The days were long and oh so good. Tiring, yes, but how can you stop when the world is in a kind mood.

May, only two steps into the calendar, seems determined to take on the role of being cruel. Whatever euphoria I experienced the previous month was instantly snatched. I was hurled back to the sad fact, that these instances of happiness are simply that: instances, now memories. All this aggravated by the heat (we're under a 29-degree weather as of this moment).

I spent half of Saturday afternoon composing a letter to someone that angered me the previous day. Before sleep and as soon as I woke up, my mind was filled with this fresh frustration and I couldn't just let is pass. But neither could I make a phone call and confront this person, no. I would simply destroy their r…